Escape (6 page)

‘Yeah. Scumbag was gonna deck him and he hadn’t done a thing.’

‘Sure. Mostly just happened to be there when the big picture fell over. Only scratched the lacquer. Not his fault anyway. He hadn’t touched it. A few baht and all’s forgiven. This—this is different. They embarrassed the guards. Holy wars have been fought over embarrassment.’

Calvin stared at me blankly and then raised his eyes to the upper floors. ‘One of them was Quan, the Singapore guy.’ Calvin had played a chess game or two with the clever one of the escape team.

‘Maybe that’s good, an embassy and all,’ I suggested. ‘Except back home they would have hanged him by now.’

‘Fuck you, too, Dave!’ But Calvin wrenched a wan smile from somewhere looking for a cause.

Of the five only Quan would survive. He had begun bargaining and paying from the outset but only as the others began to die did his keepers listen. Ultimately all he bought himself was a death sentence in Bangkwang.

Quan’s misfortune provided an excuse to speak of ways out with Dean Reed. With those foreigners who live in Thailand, the more sophisticated the home country compared to the chosen land of exile, the weirder becomes the expatriate. American Dean was stranger than most. He claimed to have taught at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University and he must have been close to someone who had. Dean understood the confusion many Asian students feel when asked to write essays arguing against existing customs. Their sense of unfairness at having to devise ideas that had not been taught. Dean’s conversations would flutter from tree stump to garden post so it was difficult to steer him onward. Even so he was the one foreigner I was sure would soon be released. He knew the people of Thailand and had local contacts, even if they might happily lynch him for whatever blatant swindle he had last pulled on them.

‘I try to tell people but they don’t understand,’ Dean would usually begin. ‘That Quan. There won’t be much fluff left on his blanket. But anything’s possible in Thailand. You know the judges used to drive their Mercedeses to court but too obvious in the car park so now those big, curtained buses are for their Honours. Now don’t worry about how guilty everyone looks in court in chains and bare feet. It’s who’s standing behind you that counts. Be careful about royalty, too. You know even ministers had to crawl out backwards from His Majesty until the 1930s. Born not far from me in Cambridge before the War. Married in Switzerland then came back here to the palace and his brother was shot. All the servants locked up then executed. So you see? Don’t do anything embarrassing. Some tourist was arrested for
lèse-majesté
for spilling a drink on a plane near the princess. Did I tell you I had dinner once with a judge? At the Oriental. French chef, you know, and I’m sure it has two courgettes in the
Michelin Guide.
I know I can fix your case, even bail. It’s only money. Not my lawyer, you won’t want to use him. You’ll need a fixer. Can you be sick? The doctor here can write reports for the court. Doesn’t cost much.’

From the stairs a thin, grey-skinned prisoner staggered down. Paint tin of shit in hand, he had no energy to lift the chains that dragged around his feet. This sight presented a break in Dean’s presentation.

‘Isn’t that one of the five?’ I asked.

‘No. Just a
soi
boy. One of the regulars.’

‘Dean, do you know of anyone who’s succeeded where they failed?’

For the first time Dean’s pace slowed. ‘No, David. That doesn’t happen here. There was something a couple of years ago from the court but that was a disaster in the end. Now look—don’t worry. It’s Thailand. Everything’s possible with money.’

The
soi
boy was, by then, over by the water tanks, cleaning his paint tin. Some of the foreigners were examining him from a distance. His skin was a dry rubber, the tattoos of Buddhist luck phrases faded to a smudged blue. From my compatriots’ faces I could see thoughts of escape had been buried. Eddie came over to remark upon the
soi
boy declining any food or help.

‘He wouldn’t even answer me,’ noted Eddie.

‘Oh, that one,’ Dean said of the grey prisoner, ‘he hasn’t spoken a word for months. I don’t think he ever will.’

Another day of a court appearance began as usual standing in a queue to have chains fitted. Ahead, a brawny Thai sat on a low stool surrounded by a pile of half-metre lengths of rusting chains. Beside him was a box of C-shaped ankle rings.

Prisoners would sit opposite, looking away as the chain-man hammered tight the ankle ring resting on a small anvil. His aim was usually true and improved when given a few cigarettes.

There was a brief delay in the line while arrangements were made for a one-legged man. A compromise was finally settled with the real leg chained to the artificial limb, although he was then permitted to use his crutches so that he could walk. Unfortunately this caused such difficulty he then had to remove the prosthetic leg and carry it under one arm. To the guards this seemed a stretching of the rule but he was allowed to go, providing he promised to keep one end of the chain attached to the leg carried under his arm.

A packet of Krong Thip filters bought me a set of polished chains and by eight in the morning I was with the others waiting for transport, squatting at the internal roadway. I was seated with Daniel, the only other foreigner due for court that day. Daniel, when he spoke at all, would talk of distant and irrelevant things. Today it was of the sour week held in the police station. He was speaking of a small grill that covered a lightless window high in the cell.

‘It had some bolts holding it in place,’ Daniel said as he stared at his feet. ‘Rusted, of course, and unmoved since being tightened what, thirty years earlier. They were covered in a fuzz of dust. Held there—the dust I mean—by the oils from body heat rising over time. Never touched in all those years. Never brushed.’

‘Well, they’re not big on cleaning in police cells,’ I said before moving back on the guttering to allow a heavy sand truck to pass in front.

‘That’s not what I mean,’ Daniel began.

Whatever he meant was silenced by the sudden action of a small Thai man with a deeply pockmarked face. As the heavy truck slowly passed the old man, he dived forward. Hands flat to the ground, he turned his head sideways to face the twin rear tyres grinding toward him.

From where we sat a ribbed tyre briefly seemed to spin faster and the truck rose a little. Then the sound of a sumo wrestler falling on a watermelon. Eerily quiet yet powerful. The old man’s shoulders twitched, his left arm flipping up from the ground before disappearing. When the truck passed it seemed his head was facing the wrong way. An illusion caused by his scalp and face being repositioned over the remains of his skull.

A small group of prisoners rose toward the body and were then quickly herded back by a guard who shouted orders to his trusties to remove the body.

‘Bravo! Well done.’ Daniel complimented the deceased. ‘Did you see that? No fear at all, just concentration on his face.’ Daniel must have been watching him for some time.

The judge hearing my case was giving my lawyer, Montree, a puzzled look as though asking: What’s this performance for? Montree had risen from his chair and swaggered toward the witness like Clarence Darrow. Quaking behind a small podium in the centre of the court stood a Thai immigration officer. He need not have worried. The performance was for me.

‘Now tell me, officer. Can you remember this particular passport? I mean, how can you tell if it was the one my client had?’

The arrivals clerk flicked a glance at Montree before responding. ‘Oh, well, that’s because it has my number on the stamp. It must be me.’

‘But how many passengers would you stamp on a shift? Tens? Hundreds? Thousands?’

‘Maybe a hundred. Eighty?’

‘So that’s just one day. One day from over a hundred days ago. Thousands of people before and after my client?’

‘Yes—’ The officer shrank farther into his ill-fitting uniform, wishing someone could have told him more of the answers before this had begun.

‘So since nothing special happened that day, you can say only that this passport has a stamp with your number on it,’ Montree then nodded to himself. ‘Nothing you can remember tells you that Westlake was actually there that day. The passport and the stamp could both be forgeries. Is that correct?’

‘Yes, it’s not easy to tell if a passport is a forgery.’

At this Montree smiled at me in victory. The judge looked to the heavens and the prosecutor closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose with one finger.

‘Anything further, Khun Montree?’ The judge reached for the microphone of his dictating machine.

‘I think not,’ beamed Montree. ‘This witness has said all he can.’

The judge then spoke into his tape recorder: ‘On cross-examination the witness said that fake passports can easily be forged. The witness is free to go.’ This then became the court’s record of my lawyer’s most excellent cross-examination.

Montree was a gentle, round-faced man in his thirties. His college training was in microbiology and after taking on lawyering, he had contracted for hustler Abe Souzel until a money dispute pushed them apart. I thought it kind of Montree to put on a show for me, even though it would have no effect on the final verdict. He didn’t ask for much money and he was happy to provide as many delays as I needed.

Village folk with flaming torches rampaging behind the high priest; ivy-league gentlefolk murmuring to gowned nobles at the Supreme Court bench. Between these variants are the courts we know well and a Thai court appears as others, with black robes and players working each side of the room. The accused is either damned or dismissed, the judge’s way of calling the match. In Western courts, tradition demands an occasional release of the puck to give the contest credibility. Thai judges are not so burdened with any quota of acquittals.

Witnesses’ testimonies, prosecutors’ claims, the defence’s pleas and views of exhibits are all transformed into the judge’s words as he speaks into his tape recorder. A typist knocks these out while wearing headphones as the trial is heard. Everyone concerned is then required to sign a copy of his honour’s thoughts at the end of each session. After the guilty verdict and sentence (the maximum is always given first, often halved for a guilty plea; the minimum for any amount of heroin seized at the airport is twenty-five years) the appeal courts take on the bargaining. In trials with many accused in the dock, some are later acquitted for economy and convenience. In practice few executions take place and death is mostly commuted to life following pleas of mercy to the king.

In less civilised times the Thai judiciary condemned to death those found guilty by suspending them in chains over glowing coals and roasting them overnight. The twentieth century brought law reform. Capital punishment is now by machine gunners firing at a red cross painted on a cloth hung in front of the prisoner. Even a last meal is available. A feast perhaps only for those with strong constitutions as the condemned receives thirty lashes with barbed wire before the last supper.

Montree had asked the judge that I sit with him at the defence table rather than between court guards as was usual. We were able to swap stories of trials we had known. I’ve never chosen a lawyer on any criteria other than his talent for telling funny stories and being good company. We were both nominating our favourite witnesses of all time and snickering a little when the judge interrupted with a question.

‘He wants to know how many witnesses you want to call,’ Montree told me, nodding at the judge. ‘What do you want to do with your case?’

As I scribbled a list of lesser-known actors I asked Montree about defence options.

‘Ah, the defence case,’Montree capped his fountain pen.
‘The dream.’

‘Is that what you call it?’

‘My words? No, that’s what everyone in court calls the defence case.
The dream.’

The new court building had been built with American government charity. It had a special lift in which guards would return prisoners to the ground-level holding cells. Courtrooms were mostly on the upper floors so I was often alone with my guards on the way down. The journey began next to a deserted stairwell and it would take at least two minutes for the small lift to arrive. At that time floors six and seven of the court building were unoccupied. Even though I was always in chains and handcuffs, this quiet place had possibilities. It would later be the setting for one of the first escape schemes.

The holding cells appear as a large underground car park divided into a dozen huge cages with twice as many corridors, all constructed from iron bars and mesh. The sound of 700 prisoners in chains moving on two acres of concrete shouting at visiting families and friends pounds the ears like a mining site. It also looks like a deep-earth excavation: everyone in brown, sweating; water dragged across the floor by foot chains from flooded toilet blocks; transport vans growling in and out; guards bellowing, shotguns protecting their cargo, with a steel lift pushing the ore up for processing.